page_title: Voie ferrée d'intérêt local
section_title: Rise and fall
hierarchical_section_title: Voie ferrée d'intérêt local / Rise and fall
caption_attribution_description: Train du chemin de fer de la Baie de Somme (CFBS) à Saint-Valéry-sur-Somme
context_page_description: In France, a voie ferrée d'intérêt local, abbreviated VFIL, is a secondary railway constructed by a local administrative division, serving sparsely populated rural areas. These areas were beyond the economic reach of the networks of the intérêt général, which were concessions of the grandes compagnies who ran their lines for profit.
context_section_description: To breathe new life into VFILs, it was necessary to enact a new law clarifying the situation. This act became law on 11 June 1880 and fixed problems with State subsidies, guaranteeing, under certain conditions, to regulate the connections with the Big Companies.
  The secondary railways then grew spectacularly, from just 2,187 km (1,359 mi) of route in 1880 to 17,653 km (10,969 mi) in 1913. This expansion was somewhat anarchic, and once again it became being necessary to change legislation so that it encompassed both railways proper and tramways that ran on normal streets. This was done with the law of 31 July 1913, designating them both under the name VFIL and establishing a new, more-logical classification distinguishing railways and urban tramways.
  The Inter-war period saw new laws (of 1 October 1926 and 17 April 1927, for example) which, with their measures of decentralisation and removal of red tape, tried to ease the financial difficulties of companies already closing their lines and often replacing them with road transport.
  Though the VFILs made up a baby boom, their lives were brief; only two or three generations will ever have seen them in use. In 1928 the various networks were at their largest, 20,291 km (12,608 mi). In the Second World War many lines closed, victims of both the road and their own slowness. Not long after the end of the war, from the early 1950s, the survivors fell one by one. But a few still survive, sometimes as heritage railways such as the Chemin de Fer de la baie de Somme.
  The development of secondary railways happened at the same time throughout Europe. In Belgium, the SNCV created infrastructure and rolling stock to respond to the same need, but they evolved differently for many different reasons (construction by a single national body, the higher population density, a greater number of connections, partial electrification, and so on) and their development culminated around 1950.
caption: The Chemin de Fer de la baie de Somme still runs today, as a heritage railway
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